Automating Your Budget + Free Template Download

I preach the value of doing a new budget every single month and how important it is to get in the habit of planning every dollar that will come in. In doing so, I get a lot of feedback dominated by eye rolls and smirks. Apparently a lot of you don’t like to make a plan for your money on paper every month. And I can’t necessarily blame you.

It is hard, and it takes discipline. It also is IMPORTANT. So when you have to choose between the latest episode of your favorite TV show or doing your monthly budget after a long day of work, the budget is apt to lose every now and then.

That being said, I bet you’d appreciate it if I could give you an easier method to do your budget than pencil and paper. That’s what today’s post is all about, thanks to a question by a reader. Let’s learn to simplify the dreaded budget!

If you’ve read my book or attended any of my workshops, you know I generally teach folks to do a budget on a calendar. It is very visual and very effective. But it is also a lot slower than other methods. For those really struggling to make ends meet and/or to behave with their money, I believe this is needed. But eventually I hope we all graduate to a better method that allows us to put our funds into categories and allocate as appropriate. This is the assumed method with this template.

If you’re a nerd like me, you’re always looking for ways to use Excel. It is something about the view of those lovely cells on the rich, white background that makes you want to enter data and calculate important variables (by formula, of course), such as 2 + 2 or 1,739,384 * 2,324,525,757 just to see what the answer is. What? Just me? I’m the only one who does that? Oh.

If that whole last paragraph made no sense to you because you don’t know what Excel is, stop reading now and just use paper – it will be easier. For everyone else who knows what Excel is and have it installed on your computer (or are willing to download Open Office or use Google docs (part of Google Drive now), a couple of good (and free) alternatives), this post is for you.

First, download the Excel budget template here. This is to give you an idea of what you can do with Excel for a simple family budget. This will NOT fit your scenario 100%. Budgeting is designed to be flexible, so please know this is just a template to guide you in doing your own budget in Excel. I’ll walk you through our process so you can see how we do our budget each month based on our steady income (I’m salaried). If you’re on an irregular income, you should read this post before you go further.

Notice there are several tabs along the bottom of the spreadsheet: one for each month, one for instructions and one for categories. Read the instructions, then fill out the categories tab according to those instructions. Most importantly, only enter data in the green cells!!!

Next, go to the tab for the month for which you’re ready to prepare the budget. Since it is currently toward the end of November, that means you’d be looking at the December tab. Remember, spend the money on paper (or in Excel) before you get it in hand. You’ll always make better decisions that way. You’ll find all the data you entered from the Categories tab auto-populated into your December tab. Yay for Excel! On this tab, enter any extra income you plan on for that specific month that you didn’t enter on the Categories tab, then enter the amounts of your various expenses. If you have other one-off expenses for the month, put those in the green cells provided for that purpose along with their amounts. Voila!

When it is all said and done, you should have a big fat 0.00 in the lower right of that month’s tab (highlighted in orange) and your budget is complete. Between savings and expenses, you “spent” every dollar of your income. That’s how a correct budget works.

If something goes wrong with your budget during the month, you can easily come back here and make adjustments. Your goal is to always end up with a 0.00 in the lower right while covering all your expenses with the income you’ve got to work with.

Well, that’s about it. For those of you who like Excel, I suspect you’ll love this form. For those of you who hate Excel, you will probably hate me now too. Oh well. That being said, I’m sure you’ll have some questions. That’s what the comments are all about. Will this make your budgeting easier?

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About Barry

Barry is the husband half of the Humorous Homemaking team. He speaks and writes about personal finance issues, helping people get out of debt, live on a budget and make the most of every cent that comes into their hands. He is the author of From Debtor to Better: The Details of Debt and How to Get Out! and regularly speaks at conferences and other events.

Disclosure of Material Connection: Some of the links in the content above are “affiliate links.” This means if you click on the link and purchase an item, I may receive an affiliate commission. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will add value to my readers. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

Comment Policy: I love reading your thoughts and input on what you read here. I'm sure we'll disagree sometimes and that's okay! In those cases, do what's right for you and yours. As with any form of communication, only post comments that move the discussion in a positive direction.

I have been reading your blog for years and I really appreciate how you all are making finances accessible. As an avid excel junkie, I REALLY appreciate the budget template (yay cell references!) as I’ve been looking for ways to improve my current model. Thank you!

Hey there, I don’t know how many months you have off for summer, but if you have 20 pay periods over the course of 12 months, it sounds to me like you have two months off (2 pay periods per month x 10 months per year). I’m guessing, so I’ve emailed you to see if I can get some additional details and help you come to the right number.

Thank you so much for this! I downloaded it and filled out the Categories tab and a tentative January tab, ‘penciled in’, to give me an idea of how it will work and I plan to revisit it each month to keep on track. I absolutely love Excel. I had an old Excel budget template I tried to use but it was much more complicated and I had no instructions and ended up abandoning it because I couldn’t figure out a way to make it work in my daily life to get myself on track. I love that this one is so simple. I think I will really use this one! I must admit I struggled briefly with the ‘irregular expenses’ field on the Categories tab. If things are irregular, how can you predict how often then come in? I couldn’t figure out also why the calculation for how much $ to put aside ea mo. wasn’t correct. Then I realized I was fillin it out wrong and needed to think of it as ‘every x months’ because I was putting in how many months per year I was receiving it and that was wrong. So a bill that comes in once per year needs to have a 12 in that column for ‘once every 12 months’ instead of a 1 for ‘once per year’ if that makes sense!!! Anyway, thank you so much!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I just recently found your website and the budget spread sheet if you have it available still would you please send me the version with more lines. I work with excel and tried to add more lines and copy the formula but can’t get it to carry over to the monthly tabs.
Thank you so much

Hi there, our family is new to your blog and learning so much! I clicked over from a link through Heavenly Homemakers (also new to us) I downloaded the automated budget templet but don’t have enough line entry space. EEEKS! What does that say about us! I need about 10 more lines for irregular expences and about 20 more for monthly expenses. Actually, most of these lines are for things that are not one large expense but rather lots of little things that just add up and sneek up on me. This templet will allow me to get it all together – ha literally. Can I add these lines? I would really appreciate the help. Thanks, Sheila.

I am just reading this and am wondering if you can offer suggestions for budgeting when we don’t know what we’ll be making from month to month. We’ve always had a steady income, but now we’re not going to know what our income will be each month, so I’m struggling to know how to best budget our money.

We also eat a whole foods, organic diet, so while that is a big expense for us, we are not paying for insurance anymore.

Thanks for any advice/input you can offer! 🙂 God’s blessings, Cheyenne

Hi. I just found this! Awesome! Thank you for doing this. I have downloaded the spreadsheet, but the only thing I am seeing are the directions. I can’t find the actual spreadsheet. What am I missing? Thank you again.
Merry Christmas!!

Thanks Barry, this will be really useful.
I worked 20 years in banking and used to be really tight about budgeting. We paid our house off and the cars. years ago
With the pressure off we relaxed a little. I got slack about tracking everything.
Now we’re are facing that empty nest, and doing retirement planning.
We’re both 50 and want to make sure we are on track for a simple but unstressed financial future.

oh my goodness Barry, may you receive rewards in Heaven for sharing this!!! This is answered prayer for me!!!! Thank you!!!! I’m familiar with excel, but not enough to add to what you created without some help. For example, I need an extra 7 rows under irregular bills. Is it more or less simple enough for you to explain how I can make that edit? I can’t just copy and paste everything below it and move it 7 rows down can I? I would think that would affect the other tabs but I’m not sure since I don’t know exactly how you have it configured. Thanks again SO much for sharing this!!!!!

#1 I love this website! I have learned so much over this past year and I am so very, very thankful to both of you! I am so glad you posted this blog 🙂 I have been wanting to do an online spreadsheet but wasn’t sure where to even start, so thank you for posting this! God Bless!!!

I am pretty experienced in Excel and I am always looking for new ways to stay on a set budget. I am not as familiar with Google Docs and don’t know how to save this in Google docs. When I download it, it downloads to Excel directly and I don’t know how to get it into Google Docs. Can you help me with that?

If you have a Google account, you can go to drive.google.com and log in. Once in there, click the button next to CREATE (left side) and upload the Excel sheet. That will drop it into Google Docs and you can use/manage it from there.

I can’t see the work sheet but would like to figure it out! My computer with excel isn’t hooked to the internet, well nothing here is but my phone. Cam you help me figure this out another way? Thru email maybe? Thanks, i’d appreciate it!!

Okay…so I downloaded Open Office and then your template but it is only opening up in a “read only” format. I do not like the templates that Open Office has available. Do you know what I need to do to get your template working for me?

Nevermind, I figured it out. I knew it was one of those slow down and focus on what your doing things! LOL 🙂 Thanks so much for the template I really like yours and think it will definitely help my family out.

Excel is pretty “smart” to figure out what you’re trying to do, so you can add lines without messing up formulas on the categories tab, but you’ll run into trouble on the monthly tabs because it doesn’t recognize what you’re doing. You would have to modify the lines on the monthly tabs lines to make this work. If you were comfortable with Excel I could explain, but since you say you’re “lost” I suspect it would only frustrate you. How many extra lines do you need?

Just sent you an updated spreadsheet with extra lines. The formatting isn’t as pretty because I had to shrink everything to make it all fit, but the content is there and if you use it on screen you’ll never notice a difference.

Another Excel nerd here. I like your spreadsheet – the colour coding makes it nice and easy for non-nerds to use. I do the same when I design spreadsheets for others. I’ll probably have to expand on it a bit as we have a LOT of bills (far too many really).

Hi Stacy! I understand your Excel nerd-ism. Its really bad when family you haven’t seen or talked to in years tell you on Thanksgiving (over the phone) “Happy Thanksgiving…Oh by the way, I need some help with Excel.” LOL!! The workbook is B-E-A-U-T-I-F-U-L…I can’t wait to use it. Thanks so much!

Barry, I’ve been reading Humorous Homemaking for quite some time now. I enjoy both
Stacy’s and your posts. My question: Do I really need separate categories in my budget for food, entertainment, and gas? I’ve
been working with these three in one lump category. We have X amt. for all three every two weeks. This method seems
to work well for us. Am I missing something?

Hey Amy. Your method works, but I would definitely encourage individual categories for food, entertainment and gas. Why? Because within reason (you can take it too far) the more categories the more accurate your budget will be. Specifically, you’ll have less “sloppiness” because each category requires your scrutiny. Taking your logic of fewer categories too far equals no categories at all and thus no budget. Taking my logic of more categories too far equals WAY TOO MANY categories and requires an accountant to keep up with it. Aim for somewhere in the middle. The “categorized budget” example I provide in the appendix of the budgeting booklet you can get by signing up for Stacy’s daily emails gives what I believe to be a pretty complete list of categories for the average family and would give you a good start.

Budgets are almost always done on a monthly basis because that’s how often bills usually come due. Being paid on a bi-weekly or twice-monthly pay schedule shouldn’t alter your approach to how you handle this spreadsheet; I would treat it as though you’re paid twice monthly. I know that two months out of the year this isn’t true, but if you live as though you don’t receive those checks you’ll be better off on the other 10 months of the year. When those two extra checks come in a couple of times a year, you can treat each as extra income on that month’s worksheet (line 6 or 7). Then recognize that you’ll just need to “spend” (save, pay extra on debt, etc.) that money those two months. Hope that helps. Let me know if you need more clarification.

I believe God created you to be the hero of your home. You CAN manage your home instead of it managing you. That’s why I empower women with simple solutions for their homemaking needs – because if it’s not easy, you won’t do it. {Read More…}

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